What do we do with Isaiah?
-orWe don't really have to understand the Hebrew Bible, do we? Why did God get himself mixed up
with the silly Old Testament anyway?
Book of Mormon, Lesson #8: 2 Nephi 6-10
A massive discourse given by Jacob to the Nephites that lasted two days. At the request of Nephi,
Jacob reads from and interprets for his people two and a half chapters of Isaiah.
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How does Jacob think/liken Isaiah?
What is Jacob teaching in chapter 9?
How is the Isaiah/interpretation of Isaiah connected to the teachings of chapter 9?
What is the connection between the Abrahamic covenant and the Book of Mormon? Between the
Abrahamic covenant and the history of the world? Remember this overarching theme:
Jehovah enters a covenant with a people, delivers them out of bondage, and
gives them life in a promised land: a way of life that manifests
God's character, and represents God's rest.
How fully can we know God if we don't recognize this pattern? The plan of salvation, for Christ
later in the Book of Mormon as much as Nephi at this early point in the text, is a question not
only of personal redemption, but also communal, essentially historical redemption (see class
notes for lesson 6).
What are Nephi's purposes regarding including this section?
Jacob “saw my Redeemer,” and so his teachings can be inserted in a text that it taken up
both with “proving unto my people the truth of the coming of Christ” and of “the
covenants of the Lord which he hath made to our fathers” (2 Nephi 11:2, 4-5).
Some textual observations:
1 Nephi 19:1-6 Nephi provides an outline of 1st and 2nd Nephi, dividing it into two large parts:
1) “an account of my making these [the small, as opposed to the large] plates shall be given
hereafter; and then [that is, only after the account of the physical production of the small plates],
behold,
2) I proceed according to that which I have spoken,” namely, to write about “the ministry and the
prophecies, the more plain and precious parts of them.”
The split between (1) and (2) occurs in the last verses of 2 Nephi 5, where the account of the
physical production of the small plates is found:
1) 1 Nephi 1 through 2 Nephi 5 is the not-commanded-but-still-sacred part of the text
2) Nephi 6-33 is the commanded-and-hence-”more-sacred” part of the text.
These two parts can be split one more time each:
1a) 1 Nephi 1-18
creation of the Lehite people (see 1 Nephi 18:22-25 for the
mention, in strict succession, of water, land, plants, animals, and
then humans)
1b) 1 Nephi 19 – 2 Nephi 5
fall of the Lehite people, division into "ites," concluding with the
Lamanites being "cut off from the presence of the Lord."
2a) 2 Nephi 6-30
the atonement effects the reinstatement of the Lehite people,
(three true messengers suddenly appear, bringing further light
and knowledge to the Nephites, teaching them in succession
about how the spiritual atonement of Christ intertwines with
2b) 2 Nephi 31-33
their own temporal history
the reinstated Lehites are to pass through the veil (a discussion of
baptism is presented entirely as a question of passing through a
gate, before which one must pray, at which one must knock, and
through which one is to see the appearance of the Savior
Himself.
In other words this fourfold pattern (creation, fall, atonement, veil) is a kind of pattern text, which
pattern is repeated in our time:
Brigham Young: “Your endowment is, to receive all those ordinances in the house of the Lord,
which are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the
presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels . . . and gain your eternal
exaltation in spite of earth and hell.” (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 416)
Elder Holland has used this same language, interestingly, in describing Nephi’s three witnesses:
“Standing like sentinels at the gate of the book, Nephi, Jacob, and Isaiah admit us into the
scriptural presence of the Lord.” (Christ and the New Covenant, p. 36)
Jacob's speech, making up 2 Nephi 6-10, is the collected teachings of the first of the three
witnesses sent to teach the meaning of the atonement to the Lehites. Its importance should not be
overlooked: not only does Nephi place it first in his “commanded” portion of the text, but he has
explicitly edited the delivered speech so that it would accomplish his purposes. The three
messengers Nephi presents are, in a sense, three in one or one in three: Jacob quotes from and
comments on Isaiah, Nephi quotes from and comments on Isaiah, and, sitting between these two
quotations-and-commentaries in the text, is Isaiah himself!
The whole of this “atonement” part of Nephi—which is ironically the very part that we as Latterday Saints tend to dismiss, to skip over, to get bored with, or to hurry through—is dedicated to a
“likening” (whatever that means…) of Isaiah. In a word: Isaiah, understood in the Nephite way,
is the key to understanding Nephi’s entire text.
Regarding Isaiah:
Current scholarship divides Isaiah into three parts (three different authors). Whether the authors
are truly different people, the texts do have significant differences, including differences in the
models of God, the texts' relationship to Jerusalem, the texts' fidelity to uniquely Israelite events,
the texts' relationship to world powers and politics, theological language, etc. Nephi appears to
recognize these differences.
1st Isaiah:
2nd Isaiah:
3rd Isaiah:
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Isaiah 2-39
Isaiah 40-55
Isaiah 1, 56-66 (never quoted in the Book of Mormon)
Jacob quotes from what scholars call Second Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah.
First Isaiah is quoted for thirteen chapters straight in the "Isaiah chapters" of 2 Nephi 12-24,
and then little bits and pieces of it are quoted here and there throughout the remainder of
Nephi’s two-book record, always with the same theological intention as the full-blown
“Isaiah chapters.”
Second Isaiah, on the other hand, it broken up into one- or two-chapter sections at a time and
quoted thus a chunk at a time throughout the whole of the Book of Mormon. Significantly,
the chapters of Second Isaiah are quoted in order: Nephi quotes Isaiah 48-49 in 1 Nephi 20-
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21; Jacob quotes Isaiah 50-51 in 2 Nephi 7-8; Abinadi quotes Isaiah 52-53 in Mosiah 13-14;
and Jesus Himself quotes Isaiah 54 (and part of Isaiah 55) in 3 Nephi 22.
A major stretch of Second Isaiah thus forms a curious backbone for the entire Nephite
history, as Mormon compiles it, while First Isaiah is put to a far more limited theological
purpose within the two-book record of Nephi.
What is the connection between First and Second Isaiah? Certain great themes:
 Redemption of a community
 A common foundation in temple typology, with 2nd Isaiah shattering in some ways the
understanding of 1st Isaiah.
 In the Book of Mormon, how do the Nephites and Lamanites fit into things? Jacob begins to
answer this through his discussion of Second Isaiah texts, but . . . Nephi interrupts with a
massive reading of First Isaiah (2 Nephi 12-24), which emphasizes the apocalyptic themes of
Isaiah.
Last, how do the Nephites understand the promise of a return to the promised land (in chapter 9)?
At this point in time, the Nephites are in the wilderness, having been chased out of the land of
their inheritance (in Alma and Mosiah it is referred to as the land of their first inheritance) and
their land of promise by the Lamanites. Jacob tells them that in the end their descendants will
rejoice in the fulfillment of the covenant of the Lord when they are restored. The idea of a
restoration then is not only of interest in terms of covenant Israel, but also in terms of their
immediate situation of exile from their promised land.
Jacob then takes this material idea of exile and restoration, and applies it to mortality. We are
exiled from the presence of God, but eventually we will be redeemed and restored to that
presence through the atonement. Jacob reminds us of the creation narrative and the Garden of
Eden - along with Adam and Eve’s eviction, and so on.